Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The due date for ISWC papers is the 21st. I was considering hacking together a purely conceptual paper to send to them, but I think it'll have a lot more weight if I wait a year and can incorporate some actual demos of Plover in (fingers crossed) action. I wonder how rapidly cheap programmable touchscreen technology will develop. I'd love to think that my retractable gauntlet idea is not so very far away. I just checked back to this thread and realized I never actually described my brilliant gauntlet idea. How could this be? It's much better than gloves or bicep keyboards or hoody-belly keyboards with dangling hoody hood screen (adorably monkish as that might be). The gauntlets are just sheaths for flexible touchpads with tactile feedback that extend outwards when unlatched (preferably by means of some cool-looking gesture) to just beneath the the fingers in their relaxed state. A slight convex bend might be nice. I wish I could draw; it's very simple and elegant as I imagine it. You do your data entry and then stow the touchpads back into the gauntlets until needed. They don't get in the way of anything, and should be light enough that you barely notice them while stowed. Man, I want a pair of these things so bad.